


wait, not just yet

by nigiyakapepper



Category: Songbirds of Valnon - L. S. Baird
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dreams, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 19:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7327345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigiyakapepper/pseuds/nigiyakapepper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a place he goes when he dies.</p><p>An empty stretch of beach—desolate and lonely to some, a source of quiet comfort for a lone Eothan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wait, not just yet

**Author's Note:**

> is it too late for celebratory things in honor of the 20-somethings of the month? *repeated winking* so i finished a spur of the moment fic while i've been perpetually stuck writing the other one...for April. i am sorry /flops
> 
> hopefully my [inspiration](http://valnon.tumblr.com/post/59016110080/mkatieo1-the-splendor-of-fall-along-the-blue) for the fic doesn't breach on too personal! it was absolutely lovely when i first read it, and stuck in my mind ever since. this is me being self-indulgent while i toe the line of various modern AUs

There is a place he goes when he dies.

The shoreline of an unending beach that no doubt curves into a long, lazy crescent somewhere far beyond the foggy horizon, past what his eyes can see. Salt-fine sand beneath his bare feet, a pale line between the smooth, dark expanse of sea before him, and the meandering rise of unbroken earth and rock which become grassy, hilly plains and end into what he knows are towering mountains far behind him, but could not be sure.

It is a wholly foreign, yet familiar place, a feeling that exists only in dreams. The skies are almost always grey, the signal of a perpetually impending storm that never finds the heart to fall. Fierce winds whip at his hair, sometimes sending spatters of sea foam on his face and arms. All around him are the smells of rain, ocean, rock and sand that have been warmed by a sun that seems loath to shine when he is around.

To anyone else, the place paints a desolate picture, one of loneliness, and isolation, a sad limbo in between life and death.

To Eothan, it is quiet. Comfortable and inexplicably nostalgic.

He never finds the need to do anything else except stand and watch the shores rush in and recede with peaceful rumbles, or walk along the shore, pausing to toe a shell, or a dried piece of coral, pick it up and toss it in the sea. He doesn’t venture very far, nor does he emit a single sound, perfectly content to listen to everything else around him.

Once or twice, he has turned around to regard the grass and hills beyond, idle curiosity laced with a creeping apprehension of never being able to return once he’s taken a decisive step toward the unknown.

“Do you want to go?” a voice asks one day, appearing beside him.

Eothan does not startle, but turns to the voice, not knowing what it is yet expecting it all the same. He thinks for a moment, and glances at his feet, happily buried in sand. He wiggles his toes.

“I don’t know what’s beyond this,” he answers honestly.

The voice beside him laughs, a low quiet sound, and he thinks it is familiar (he’s heard himself make it). “I’ll show you.”

Eothan takes the pale outstretched hand that comes into his view. He does not look at whoever it’s attached to, the owner of the voice, out of reverence or disinterest. Although he does catch a glimpse of cloth billowing in the breeze, soft light fabric of lavender and grey, pale feet with a band of small, silver bells encircling an ankle. He never hears them make a sound.

Before his curiosity grows, they both take one step, two steps upon the rocks, onto crumbled earth where sparse tufts of grass spread into lush fields.

A fierce blue sky opens up to them, dotted with bright white clouds closer to the horizon. The sun is overhead, warm and bracing. Beyond the plains are, sure enough, mountains, framing a valley beyond which neither of them could see past. Everything feels so spread out and open, as if a landscape of what was the exact opposite was the very definition of imprisonment and unhappiness.

Eothan is wide-eyed and breathless. It is more beautiful than he imagined. He thinks of long roads, of trekking and travel. There's a tugging at his heart. He wants to run, to fly, to see it all.

“You want to hop on your Chevy and drive, don’t you,” the voice beside him says, a wry knowing smile evident in the tone. Eothan is quite sure the voice is his, save for a foreign note of song he can’t recognize.

“God yes,” he finds himself answering. Rush on the radio, a cooler of beer in the back. Food, a day bag, his camera and his husband's sketchbook.

Sketchbook...

“Wait,” Eothan says, looking at the arm that has returned to its owner’s side. He feels a bit sheepish, negotiating like this, backing out when his skin tingles with the desire to drop everything and just _leave_. Something inside him is sure, however, and that is what he listens to.

“Not just yet. I want Alveron to see this place.”

Eothan finally looks up and sees his face (someone with his face? It’s ornately painted for ceremony) smiling softly at him. He nods and the world is white.

 

 

 

 

 

He returns to the living with a gentle intake of breath.

“D’you...d'you think dreams are glimpses of lives your other selves are living? And that their dreams are their glimpse of yours?” Eothan asks the open air, words slurred and voice thick with sleep.

“Well good morning to you too,” Alveron says (no doubt behind him, sketching).

Eothan rolls over on the chaise on which he had fallen asleep posing for his partner’s drawing endeavors. The white sheet that had been artfully draped around his nude form shifts. Eothan doesn’t care as he settles himself with his head on his arm as a pillow. Judging by the brightness of the sunlight splashing prettily on him, it’s mid-morning.

Alveron has tied his hair back in a charming low ponytail, glasses perched on his nose, donned in a large mauve bathrobe complete with fuzzy, cream-colored slippers and a glass of half-finished Merlot sitting on a side table with his art things. He is the very picture of middle-aged self-indulgence, taking up drawing as a hobby because he can (and he’s damn good at it too, Eothan sighs, and no, he’s not at the age where people consider ballroom dancing as a preventive measure against osteoporosis, though in twenty years, he imagines that’ll be how he spends his Saturday afternoons. Alveron trying to dance keeps Eothan entertained for two minutes).

“What did you dream about?” his partner asks, glancing at him for reference before returning to his sketch with quiet scratches of graphite on paper.

“It was terrible,” Eothan says, letting his arm hang dramatically from the lounge. Alveron gives him a look bemused as it was amused, knowing the other man was unsubtly trying to thwart him from successfully drawing him, but he didn’t mind. “You were the king of Santorini.”

“Was I?” Alveron remarks, not knowing what else to say beyond wondering why being a king would be a bad thing, and while Greece was in need of financial assistance, he is sure it isn’t switching to a monarchy any time soon.

“I was your secret lover,” Eothan continues. “Dead for three thousand years,” he looks up at Alveron and lets out a laugh at the confusion on his face.

“So…I’m into…necrophilia?”

Eothan laughs even harder (the snorty kind) and mimics the movements and sounds of zombies without getting up from the chaise. Alveron laughs as well, and sets his sketchbook down to cross the space between them. Eothan reaches up and cradles Alveron’s face in his large hands, burying  his fingers in his hair. Their laughs soften into gentle chuckles as Alveron repeats his good morning greeting with a kiss.

Idly, Eothan's thoughts return to the vast meadows, the misty valley, and the sea. One day, when they're both ready...

(He imagines someone singing in the distance.)


End file.
